


Carved

by longwhitecoats



Series: Staccato [4]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: BDSM, Dirty Talk, Kink Negotiation, M/M, Shame
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-07
Updated: 2013-08-07
Packaged: 2017-12-22 16:21:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/915382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/longwhitecoats/pseuds/longwhitecoats
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Will can't sleep. Hannibal comes over for a chat.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Carved

Moonlight spills through Will’s window and he shifts in bed. His nights have gotten worse, he thinks; he’s never been a good sleeper, but he can’t even remember now the last time he had a full night’s sleep. He feels hot. Every time he shifts to cool the part of his body he’s been lying on, the dogs whine and thump their tails, either in sympathy or in the eternal canine hope that it’s time to get up and go for a walk.

Will exhales. He looks over at the nightstand: not quite midnight. His vision refocuses on the object in front of the clock. It’s his cell phone, brought to his bedside for some obscure reason he can’t recall to mind. He stares at it for a while as the minutes tick past in blue neon. It’s very late. He shouldn’t call. But he finds himself holding the phone in his hand, flicking to the entry that reads _Doctor H. Lecter_ , and putting the call through.

It picks up on only two rings; Hannibal’s either a night owl or a light sleeper. “Will?” he says, sounding concerned. “Are you all right?”

“I, yeah,” Will says, suddenly embarrassed that he would call at such an hour with anything other than an emergency. But he can’t just hang up now. He puts a hand over his face. “I, sorry, I realize this is actually completely inappropriate, calling you in the middle of the night. I just, it’s not a crisis or anything. I can’t—I can’t sleep.” When he says it at last, it doesn’t sound so bad; it sounds like something a normal person would say, maybe, to his lover. His _lover_. Will blushes, even though Hannibal can’t see him.

“I see.” Will can almost hear the disapproval.

“Listen, I’m sorry to have—woken you, or interrupted whatever you were doing, it’s late, I shouldn’t have called. I just—god, I don’t know. Do you ever have those nights where the stars seem to fade, and everything just slips away from you, right through your fingers, like water...” He catches himself. He’s rambling now. He can hear Hannibal breathing on the other end of the line—heavy breathing, Will realizes, like he’s been running. It sends him back to the last time he heard Hannibal breathing like that in his ear, the night Hannibal tied him to the cross and rutted himself against Will’s ass, and the sudden rush of warmth in his chest makes him understand why he picked up the phone in the first place. “I missed you,” he says roughly, and he hears Hannibal make a soft humming noise, whether of pleasure or censure he can’t tell. “I’m sorry if I’m being rude,” he adds, self-conscious.

“Not at all,” Hannibal says, the cell connection making his voice crackle. “I’m glad you called. The drive isn’t long; shall I pay you a visit?”

Will smiles. The drive isn’t exactly short, either, but he’s not going to look this gift horse in the mouth; the sense of relief he has at the idea that Lecter will come see him, stop the world from spinning and set it upright again, is too powerful to argue with. “Please,” he says. “Yes.”

“I’ll be there in an hour,” Hannibal says, and then the call terminates.

Will stares at the phone for a few minutes afterward, rubbing his thumb over the plastic casing. It’s real, he thinks. Hannibal is really going to come over and comfort him in the middle of the night. He has someone in his life who will do that for him now.

The thought buoys him enough to get him out of bed and into the kitchen to boil some water. All the dogs jump after him, wagging their tails hopefully.

**

It’s half past one by the time Will hears the soft rumble of a car outside and the surprised yips of the dogs. They put their paws up for treats when they see that it’s Hannibal. Will grunts at them. “Down,” he says, chiding. “Sorry. They think you mean food.”

Hannibal’s face is in shadow as he steps in. “Well,” he says, “As it happens, I brought them something.” He reaches into his pocket and comes up with a handful of dried meat. The dogs whine and then snuffle at his trousers as he hands it around. They follow him into the house, wagging.

“Traitors,” Will says as he shuts the door. He looks up. With the dogs no longer between them and their small business concluded, Will feels abruptly self-conscious. He’s in his boxer shorts and an undershirt, and Hannibal looks like he’s just come from the office, still in his suit and jacket.

Hannibal cocks his head. “Something wrong, Will?” He seems to hesitate, then; but he adds, “Should I not have come?”

“No, no,” Will says, hastily, and then realizing what that sounds like, and further realizing that he has no idea how to respond in the affirmative to a negative question, he puts up his hands defensively, babbling, “I mean yes, you should have come. I mean. There isn’t really an official protocol for inviting your therapist over in the middle of the night because you’re having terrible insomnia, and when you _can_ sleep you have nightmares, and you—miss him.” His throat tightens. “So. Are either of us really surprised that I’m bad at this?” he adds, lifting a hand and letting it fall, trying to express the futility, the eternal frustration, that is his trying to interact with other human beings.

“I don’t believe any protocol matters in this case other than the one we decide to follow,” Hannibal says, calm as always, cool as water. “And as you indicated on the phone, you’re not feeling your best, are you, Will?”

Will lets out a long breath. “No.”

“Very well,” Hannibal says, and gestures with his bag. “Shall we eat?”

They sit in the kitchen. Hannibal unclasps the bag, producing a gleaming chrome contraption that unfolds to reveal two pre-made, pre-garnished dishes. A bottle emerges from the bag, too, a small one.

“A _demi-bouteille de petit manseng_ ,” he says, removing two glasses from Will’s cupboard and pouring out a sweet-smelling white wine. “From a local vinyard. This is not a true manseng, of course; those are dark grapes, so dark they leave their stain on your fingers. Hence the name. _Main sang_.”

“Blood hand,” Will mutters.

Hannibal’s head jerks up at that, as if he’s been caught off guard.

“What?” Will says.

Hannibal’s eyes narrow and his lips twitch, an expression Will can’t read. “You speak French.”

“I hate to disappoint you,” Will says, taking a glass. “I speak Creole. Not French. And only a little bit.” He shifts in his seat. “You pick it up if you grow up where I did.”

Hannibal nods and makes that _hmmm_ noise again. Will is beginning to believe it means that he’s both surprised and pleased by the surprise. He wonders for a moment, with a pang of fear, how long he can remain a surprise to Hannibal, how many secrets he could possibly have to reveal. He has a vision, suddenly, of an empty dish in a cold kitchen, a meal devoured and gone. He rubs his hands over his face. The feeling dissipates. “What’s in the bowl?” he says.

Hannibal lifts one of the dishes and puts it in front of Will. Even under Will’s awful florescent kitchen lights, it’s beautiful: thin slices of rye topped with dollops of finely minced liver alongside a perfect oval of sour cream, over which slivers of green onion have been sprinkled. A single cornichon finishes the plate.

“You brought me chopped liver,” Will says, a bubble of delight rising in his chest. “Chopped liver on rye with sour cream and onions. And a pickle. I haven’t had this since the last time I was in New York.” He looks Hannibal in the eye. “Thank you.”

“My pleasure.” Hannibal lifts his glass to Will and then tips it up, inhaling the bouquet. He drinks.

Will feels a little silly eating this dish with a knife and fork, but eating with his fingers in front of Hannibal doesn’t bear thinking about. No reason to make Hannibal think he’s even more of a wild animal than he really is; he can at least prove he’s housetrained. He cuts a slice of the liver and rye, spreading a little sour cream on it with the knife, and when he puts it in his mouth, he can’t help letting out a quiet groan of pleasure.

Hannibal is watching him. “Does it please you?”

It does, Will wants to say, but he’s still savoring the feel of it on his tongue, the slight tang of the sour cream, the rich, cold taste of the liver, and something sweet underneath that makes him lick his lips and reach for his wine glass.

“Mmm,” he says at last, swallowing. “Yes. What is that taste—?” He doesn’t know enough about food to even ask the question. But Hannibal knows, somehow, what he means, just like he always knows what Will’s trying to say, sometimes even before Will himself knows he’s trying to say it.

“Schmaltz,” Hannibal says. “A traditional chopped liver is made with rendered goose fat.”

“You spoil me,” Will murmurs, half to himself, but he feels Hannibal’s eyes on him, his face serious.

“Yes,” he says, and Will feels his boxers growing tight.

When they have eaten, Hannibal packs up all the dishes back into a neat tower and tucks it into his bag, and Will puts the silverware in the sink. They sip their wine quietly, watching Will’s dogs, and then Will suggests that they could go out on the porch. It’s not too cold yet; the leaves have fallen, but there’s no snow.

The moon is so bright over the fields and trees that Will doesn’t even turn on the porch light, just offers Hannibal his own usual chair and then, without thinking about it, sits down at Hannibal’s feet and leans his back against the rough siding of the house. Hannibal accepts the chair gracefully—he does everything gracefully, Will supposes—but he looks amused.

Will wants to ask what that means, but he doesn’t know how to say it. He feels like he’s floating, tethered to earth only by the full feeling in his stomach. He can still taste the liver and cream on his lips; his head is made light by the strangeness of having Hannibal here at this hour, _here_ , where he’s spent so many evenings alone with his dogs and his whiskey, here on this old familiar porch. Slowly, uncertainly, he leans over until his shoulder is touching Hannibal’s thigh, and then he gives in, lets go, and slides his chin onto Hannibal’s leg, looking up at the other man’s face for any sign of displeasure.

Hannibal simply looks back at him for a moment. Then he lifts a hand and slides it into Will’s hair, tugging at it gently, and the tension of the night falls away and leaves Will bare and safe and aching with lust, and all Will can say is, “ _Oh_.”

He hears a soft chuckle.

They stay like that, Hannibal’s fingers making a mess of Will’s hair. Will feels like nothing matters except the low hum of his blood and the desires of his body. He realizes that right now, for the first time in he can’t remember how long, he is content exactly where he is. Everything is simple. He drifts.

“Do you know what the word _staccato_ means, Will?” Hannibal says.

Will opens his eyes. “Short,” he says. “It’s a musical notation for short beats.”

The air is still. Night renders the ground invisible, and Will feels like his houseboat is drifting gently on an open sea, washing away under the stars.

He feels Hannibal’s fingers twist in his hair, tug at him the way Will sometimes runs his dogs’ velvety ears through his fingers. “Not quite,” Hannibal says at last. “It means _detached_. Each note separate from every other note. Each its own sound in the musical landscape.”

The feeling of safety makes him drowsy, or perhaps the wine does; Will blinks heavy eyelids as he says, more sweetly than he meant to, “Are you teaching me musical theory, Doctor Lecter?”

Hannibal’s hand drifts down underneath Will’s chin. He lifts Will’s face. Will gasps, a flood of heat rising inside him. He can’t see Hannibal’s eyes; the moonlight halos the crown of his head, and his face is in shadow. He can just make out his lover’s lips.

Will swallows, feeling how taut his throat is, pulled at this unnatural angle. “I—“ He doesn’t know what to say.

Hannibal leans down and kisses him then, slow and warm, his hands on both sides of Will’s face. When he’s finished, he holds Will’s gaze, something Will can barely believe he’s able to tolerate. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he feels himself panicking, like a rabbit caught in the open. _Run_ , his mind whispers, and he forces the thought away.

“Detachment,” Hannibal says softly, “might be good for you, Will.” He leans back, letting his hands fall. The loss of warmth is stark; it’s all Will can do not to crawl into Hannibal’s lap. He feels a pang under his ribs. He leans back against the hard siding of the house.

“It seems to me that’s the last thing I need,” Will says. He can’t even feel bitter, just heavy, suddenly filled with grey, soggy lassitude. He slumps. “I can hardly hear the music. I don’t need to be off playing my own melody.”

“Ah, but Will,” Hannibal says, “that’s exactly what you do need.”

Will looks up. Hannibal leans forward, rests his elbows on his knees. He folds his hands, long fingers interlacing. “For too long, you have been plucking your own strings to sound out other people’s tunes,” he says.

Will snorts. “Like a player piano.” He looks down into his glass, swirls the wine. He can’t argue with Hannibal. He’s right. He barely knows anymore where he ends and these killers begin. “So I need to, what, make my own kind of music?” He means it to be snide, but in the lonesomeness of night, it sounds sad. It sounds pathetic. And he realizes, just for a moment, he has no idea what it would mean.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees that Hannibal is still watching him. He puts down his wine glass and flattens his palms against the old boards of the porch. Grit and earth press into his skin. He realizes he’s holding onto the ground for dear life so that he won’t fall, and the notion is so sad and funny that he startles himself into laughter.

“Will?”

He coughs, trying to speak; his throat feels tight. “Sorry. I just—you know that one about how you’re not drunk if you can lie on the floor without holding on?” He digs his fingernails in, peeling away flecks of paint. “I think I need to hold on.”

“You seem a bit hysterical, Will.”

“No, I’m fine, I’m fine. Just—Jesus.” He runs a hand through his hair and stares out into the darkness. “I guess I didn’t expect to talk about this. About all the killers in my head. The murders in my head.”

“But you’re dreaming about them. That’s why you called. Because you were afraid to see them again in your dreams.”

Will winces. He’s not sure what stings more—that it’s not framed as a question, or that Hannibal’s absolutely right.

“Yes.”

Hannibal doesn’t move.

“All right,” Will says. “Okay. Maybe I do need to—detach.” He picks up his wine glass and downs what’s left. “So, Doctor Lecter,” he says, his voice low and challenging, “how do you plan to detach me?”

Hannibal leans back again, swallowed up in the shadow of the roof; all Will can see is his shoes, his legs, and his steepled fingers beneath that sensuous mouth, pursed in thought. He has that quieting feeling again, the sensation of his jangling nerves collapsing down into a background hum as he gives himself over to this man’s care and command. His erection returns as he waits, his body and mind both swelling with anticipation.

Hannibal’s voice sounds crisp in the darkness. “At our last encounter, you begged me to sodomize you.”

Will’s breath catches in his throat. “ _God_.”

“I would very much like to hear you beg for it again.” He pauses. “And I would like to grant your request. Eventually.”

“Eventually.” Dizziness takes Will. He has to stop himself from clutching at his erection to hide it. He presses his legs together instead, curls himself up around it and leans against the house, but he’s sure that Hannibal can hear the frantic beating of his heart. _The tell-tale heart_ , he thinks.

“I do not think that this will be enough to detach that whirring mind of yours from your body,” Hannibal says.

“What do you propose?” Will whispers weakly. It certainly _sounds_ like enough. He’s feeling nearly overcome with lust right now; he can hardly think of anything other than the words _beg for it_ in Hannibal’s voice, the consonants almost swallowed.

“I was going to ask you the same thing,” Hannibal says, and waits.

Will could growl at him. It would come out as a whine, though, he knows, a whimper. Blood thrums in his ears. He _wants_. He wants... “I want you to use the knife on me,” he chokes out, and he hears again that little hum of pleasure from the darkness.

“How?”

“What?” Will says. “How?”

“How do you want me to use the knife on you?” Hannibal murmurs, and oh god, he has to say it, of _course_ Hannibal is going to make him say it.

He licks his lips. “I want you to—cut me. Draw blood. As if—as if I were your victim.” The last word is nearly inaudible. Shame fills him. He is hard and leaking into his boxers now, his arousal impossible to hide. He has the sudden and unshakeable thought that Hannibal can _smell_ his arousal, which sends a shudder of fear and embarrassment through him.

“My victim.” Hannibal speaks softly now, too; Will shivers, wraps his arms around himself. “As if I were a killer.”

“Yes,” Will breathes.

There’s a pause. Will would wonder if he’s gone too far, except he’s told Hannibal this before, back on the night this all began—and yet it _still_ feels shameful, frightening, and he wonders for the hundredth time how Hannibal can stand to touch him, to keep coming back for more. He wonders what Hannibal can possibly see in this mess he’s made of himself.

“Three more questions,” Hannibal says. He can almost hear Hannibal thinking, as if an idea is growing in his head, an image, like a rivulet of ink dropped from a brush. “Firstly: how do you feel about being bound?”

“I,” Will says, “I would like that.”

“Being gagged?”

That gives Will pause; he’s never been gagged before, and he doesn’t know how his body will respond. “Would _you_ like it if I were gagged?” He says. “I thought you liked to hear me beg.”

“I do,” Hannibal says, and he chooses that moment to sit forward again. He emerges slowly into the light, and there’s a moment when all that Will can see of his face is the shape of a hollowed-out skull. He looks dangerous. Powerful. “I would go so far as to say that the sound of you begging me to fuck you is the most beautiful thing I have ever heard.”

Will moans.

“But there are other sounds I want you to make,” Hannibal says. “For example, I would very much like to hear you try to say my name around a gag as I penetrate you.” Hannibal looks down at his hands for a moment, breaks eye contact. Will can’t remember seeing him do that before. It’s a look of shame, he realizes, and the idea that _Hannibal_ is ashamed of what he’s about to say makes Will’s whole body tighten with anticipation.

“And,” Hannibal says, “I would like to hear what you sound like when you try to cry for help.”

“Oh _God_ ,” Will says, “yes, God, please. Yes. _Yes_.” He’s trembling now, helpless and quivering like a fish on a line.

“Ah,” Hannibal says, and Will sees that he, too, is erect in his trousers. “Good.”

“Can we,” Will says, and he hardly even knows what he’s saying, he’s so fogged with lust— “My bed—“

“We can’t right now, Will, of course you know that,” Hannibal says softly, and Will groans. He’s right, of course, Will’s in _no_ condition—he wasn’t in any condition for it _before_ Hannibal got here, hell—but Will wants him, he _wants_ so badly.

Will grits his teeth. “What was the third thing?” he manages.

Hannibal is examining his hands again. It’s so strange to see him like this—Hannibal is never unsure, never embarrassed. “What is it?” Will says. He remembers to gentle his voice a little. It must be hard for Hannibal to say, whatever it is. He tries to remind himself that this is very intimate, what they’re doing, and that in his own way, Hannibal is putting himself in Will’s power as much as Will is in his.

“There is a particular thing that pleases me very much,” Hannibal says, “but I fear you will find it strange.” He looks back up then. “But perhaps you can already guess what it is.”

Will’s field of vision seems to narrow; his mind replays all their meals together, the way Hannibal watches him eat, the lavishness with which Hannibal serves him.

“Food,” Will says, a little wonderingly, but sure. “You’re into—food play.” A corner of his mouth quirks up.

Hannibal rubs one thumb over the other. “Does that frighten you?”

“No,” Will says immediately. “No, I think that could be hot, actually. Especially if—“ he can’t help it, his eyes flick down to Hannibal’s trousers—“Especially if it’s something you want.”

“It is.” Hannibal holds his gaze, now.

“Okay,” Will says. He forces himself to take a deep breath. He feels keyed-up and edgy, as if he’d been running. Some strain he didn’t know he felt buzzes abruptly in his ears; he senses that a bargain has been struck, and that, despite their careful negotiations, he has somehow neglected an important detail.

“Good,” Hannibal says. And then: “It’s late.”

Then Hannibal’s hands are there in his, and Hannibal is kneeling in front of him— _kneeling_ on his dirty wooden porch, moonlight glinting on his wristwatch and patent leather shoes. Will feels a lump in his throat, a swell of gratitude for this man, this guiding light in the darkness. He doesn’t know what to do.

“Thank you,” he says, and Hannibal just enfolds him, reaches his arms around Will’s shoulders. They stay like that, Will surrounded by Hannibal’s fine clothes and familiar smell, until the tension subsides, and with it, the last of Will’s energy. He is wrung out like a dishtowel.

Dimly, he hears Hannibal murmur something in his ear, and then he’s standing, walking. The glass is taken from his hand. The screen door opens; the dogs bustle his feet and calves. His own bed swells up beneath him, and as sleep takes him, he feels Hannibal press a soft kiss to his forehead, as if he were a child.

He dreams that night that he’s walking through a forest. Fog spirals around him. He smells but cannot see a fire. He feels something tug at his feet, and the world tilts, the whole forest seeming to pour upward over his head, and then he is dangling from the branch of a great tree by one foot, suspended in midair. The fog around him twinkles and sparks. He hears a snuffling sound. Then it slips away, and he wakes.

It’s dawn. There is a note under his pillow in Hannibal’s even handwriting.

_I hope you rested well. Please come for dinner tonight at nine. We will play the first note. H._

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks, as ever, to toft for proofreading and encouraging me to post this, and to all of you, for reading it.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Carved](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3331994) by [dodificus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dodificus/pseuds/dodificus)




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